(Reporter's Notebook by Steven Allen Adams - Photo Illustration - MetroCreativeConnection)

Since former governor Jim Justice took his oath of office as a U.S. senator last year and former attorney general Patrick Morrisey was sworn in as West Virginia’s 37th governor, there has been somewhat of a cold war between the two officials.

I won’t go over the entire history of the cold war, but the most recent incident involves the announcement by the Morrisey administration last week that Arizona-based Frontieras North America finally closed on the purchase of 183 acres in Mason County to move forward with a proposed $850 million investment in the state to construct a new coal reformation facility.

When I was using a search engine to find more information about the company, I came across a press release by the company in 2022 first announcing its coal reformation project for Mason County with quotes from then-governor Justice.

Now, I do not recall this project being announced back in 2022, but our newspapers did publish articles at the time. The company was supposed to break ground in 2023.

I’m unsure whether the Morrisey team bothered to do the same level of research, but there was no mention of the Justice administration’s previous involvement in Morrisey’s press release. I pointed out that the project was first announced in 2022 on my X account, which was quickly retweeted by U.S. Sen. Justice’s X account and by some of Justice’s loyal soldiers. Justice also released his own press release.

“It is fantastic to see the progress Frontieras North America has made in Mason County,” Justice said. “We knew this project would be a home run when we first announced this investment over three and a half years ago.”

Morrisey tried to thank Justice on social media after the fact and give credit, but the damage was done. Surely it wouldn’t have been too big a deal for the Morrisey team to include a paragraph in their Monday press release acknowledging this project was first announced by the former Justice administration.

On the other hand, it wouldn’t have hurt Justice to be the bigger man (no pun intended) and thank Morrisey for finalizing the deal. Afterall, this is a project that Justice appears to have dropped the ball on. And while his team directed questions about why it took nearly four years for progress on the project to resume, Justice is the one who spent years promoting his ability to make deals and bring economic development projects here.

If only Justice put the same level of energy he has for trolling Morrisey into being a U.S. senator.

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Then again, Morrisey also needs to stop trying to turn ongoing projects long since announced into new economic development wins. For example, Morrisey announced Thursday at the GO-WV winter meeting that Calpine LLC has finalized its project to build a 500-megawatt natural gas power plant in Moundsville.

That’s wonderful, but The Intelligencer first announced this project back in December, and the project had been in the works for years. It’s fine to announce that the project is closer to reality, but taking credit for the project is a bit of a stretch. In fact, many of the economic development projects announced by Morrisey over the last six months have been largely re-treads of projects most industry people have been aware of or on the drawing table for years.

Morrisey needs an economic development win that is truly all his own, negotiated during his tenure and finalized.

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The candidate filing period ends at midnight this Saturday, so by next week we will know who our various candidates for statewide and legislative offices will be, including candidates for the West Virginia Supreme Court of Appeals.

Covering judicial races is hard and boring. Because judicial candidates are very restricted on the kinds of things they can say about themselves as they campaign, seeing as how they could place themselves into situations as elected judges and justices where they might have to recuse themselves from certain cases based on the kinds of things they’ve said on the campaign trail.

That’s why I was taken aback when Raleigh County Circuit Court Judge Todd Kirby, a former Republican member of the House of Delegates and now a state Supreme Court candidate, spoke Wednesday morning at a Health Freedom Day rally in the State Capitol Building’s lower rotunda.

Kirby was preceded at the podium by advocates against vaccinations, including Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. advisor Aaron Siri, the lead attorney on the Raleigh County religious vaccine exemption case that Kirby had to recuse himself from hearing. (Kirby had been a supporter of religious exemptions while in the Legislature). That case is now before the state Supreme Court, which could still be deciding the case after May, which serves as the general election for Supreme Court candidates.

I listened to Kirby speak and I don’t believe he said anything that would run afoul the Code of Judicial Conduct. But that probably won’t stop political operatives from filing complaints against Kirby anyway. I just don’t understand taking that risk.